MLB: All-Star Game tie in 2002 not all bad for Bud Selig

NEW YORK — There was cork in bats, banned substances in veins, too many teams in one league, not enough in another, a two-day World Series rain delay, the disintegration of the value of the home-run record and inflation of ticket prices.

There was also a growth of spectacular new ballparks, preemptive moves into cable and cyberspace, rising attendance figures and an expansion of baseball internationally.

There was all of that in the career of baseball commissioner Bud Selig, some good, some bad, some, like during the World Series of 2008 in Philadelphia, way too wet.

And he knows, for everybody knows, that somewhere in the first paragraph of his life story will the story of July 9, 2002, in Milwaukee and the All-Star Game that literally would never end. National League 7, American League 7. Good night, everybody?

“Can I just say something about that, and would the women in here kindly not listen?” Selig would say Tuesday, 11 years later, in an All-Star break lunchtime chat with the members of the Baseball Writers Association of America in Manhattan. Pausing for effect, the 78-year-old commissioner reminded everyone, “We were (bleeping) out of pitchers.”

With that, there was a roar of laughter in a bygones-be-bygones sort of acceptance. And considering one of the results of that disaster, it was time. For in part, but not directly because the All-Star Game had become so relatively insignificant that it was not unthinkable for one to end in a dead heat, it has come to mean so much more.

So Tuesday in CitiField, for the 11th consecutive summer, the winning league in the All-Star Game won the home-field advantage for the World Series. Previously, each league would enjoy the advantage in alternating years.

“The next year, we were in Chicago,” Selig said. “Somebody hit a home run late in the game, and every player was up on the top step of the dugout. And I said to my wife, ‘It worked.’”

Though the plan has been criticized for allowing the result of an exhibition game to impact the world championship, it has given the All-Star Game fresh meaning.

“Well, I think the way the last nine World Series have gone, seven have been won by the team with the home-field advantage,” said Detroit Tigers manager Jim Leyland, who managed the American League stars Tuesday. “Obviously, there was not a seventh game in all of those. Last year, we only played four and lost, so don’t know what that means exactly.

“But I think that it is a nice touch. You win this game, you do get that. I think you do live by the old saying, ‘There’s no place like home.’ I think that pretty much sums that up. It statistically says that it does give you an advantage.”

According to Selig, there was movement toward adding value to the result of the All-Star Game before the 2003 switch — a quiet effort, still, to muffle the criticism of the 2002 tie.

“I think home-field advantage in the World Series helps,” said Giants manager Bruce Bochy, who managed the National League Tuesday. “Like Jimmy said, there’s no place like home. There’s just a sense of comfort for the players. So I do think that it plays a part. It’s hard to quantify how much.”

The National League had won the 2010, 2011 and 2012 All-Star Games … and the World Series sin each of those seasons. That is still too insignificant to declare a trend, but it might have added to the mystery of the 21st century All-Star Game stakes.

“People say, ‘Well, you did it for television,’” Selig said. “Well, that isn’t unconstitutional or immoral either. We have a TV partner, they pay us a lot of money, we’d like to make them happy. But it has worked.”

It has worked, and if it continues to work, Bud Selig’s everlasting image my just be a touch cleaner.

“I don’t regard this as part of my history,” Selig said of the 2002 game. “It happened. And the fate of western civilization, by the way, wasn’t changed one iota as a result of that tie, lest anybody get too concerned about it.”